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A week after a report found that dams in Lancaster County and Maryland are no longer trapping polluting farm and urban stormwater runoff, the Maryland Department of the Environment says it plans to deny a water-quality permit renewal to the Conowingo Dam.

Exelon, the owner of the hydroelectric dam on the Susquehanna River in Cecil County, Maryland, has been seeking relicensing renewal from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The dam also needs a water-quality permit from Maryland to operate.

The state’s Department of the Environment says Exelon hasn’t fully supported its contention that the dam’s reduced ability to trap sediment is not harming the Chesapeake Bay, about 10 miles downriver, the Associated Press reported.

English: The dam and spillway at Raystown Lake on the Raystown Branch of the Juniata River in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, USA. The dam was constructed in 1978 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for flood control and hydroelectric power generation. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This weekend, Huntingdon County will celebrate four decades of life on the water as Raystown Lake hits the big four-zero. The Huntingdon County Visitors Bureau has an array of activities and entertainment planned all weekend to celebrate the popular recreation destination. Featuring behind-the-scenes tours of the dam, a Battle of the Bands, various demonstrations, cruises and fireworks, it is all but guaranteed that this will be one birthday bash that will not be soon forgotten.

“June 6 marks the 40th anniversary of the day Vice President Gerald Ford dedicated the dam that forms Raystown Lake in 1974,” said Matt Price, the executive director of the HCVB. “The lake’s history goes back more than 60 years, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers first proposed constructing a high-level dam in the valley of the Raystown Branch of the Juniata River in the late 1940s.”

The largest lake entirely set within the commonwealth, the sheer size of Raystown is impressive and is more than capable of accommodating everything the HCVB has in store for the weekend.

It’s been 30 years since Congress directed the Army Corps of Engineers to investigate the feasibility of deepening the channel from 40 feet to 45.

Since the project began in March 2010, 42 miles of the 102-mile channel from Camden to the Atlantic Ocean have been deepened. Thirty-five miles are already naturally at or below 45 feet, which leaves about 25 miles left to be dredged.

English: Opekiska Lock and Dam on the Monongahela River. The dam is located about seven miles northeast (downriver) from Fairmont, West Virginia, at river mile 115.4. The lock and dam were constructed 1961–64 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to improve navigation on the Monongahela River, replacing 60-year-old locks 14 and 15. View is downriver to the northeast. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A Pittsburgh-based marine services company has built two new tugboats, a reminder that the old business of pushing barges along rivers continues even in modern times.

Campbell Transportation christened the Renee Lynn and the Alice Jean at a riverside ceremony last week. The 65-foot-long, 24-foot-wide boats are the first new major vessels built in Pittsburgh in 30 years, the company said.

OCEAN CITY, N.J. – At the north end of town, a 309-foot dredge operated by Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. of Oak Brook, Ill., has been operating 24 hours a day for several days, in a project that will pump 1.8 million cubic yards of sand from the ocean floor onto the beaches.

There’s no such whoosh of beach-rebuilding at the south end, leaving homeowners there puzzled and upset, especially since Sandy left their shoreline in even worse shape.

City officials said that the north-end project was in the works even before the storm struck and that they are unsure what federal aid might be forthcoming to do more right away.

That’s not a good enough explanation for south-end homeowners, many of whom also depend on vacation-rental income.

ABOARD THE DREDGE POTTER, on the Mississippi River — This ship is making sure that the Big River, shrinking under one of the worst droughts in modern history, stays deep enough.

The Potter is scooping this stretch of the Mississippi River’s navigation channel just south of St. Louis, the ship’s 32-foot-wide head sucking up about 60,000 cubic yards of sediment each day and depositing it via a long discharge pipe a thousand feet to the side in a violent, muddy plume that smells like muck and summer.

The Army Corps of Engineers has more than a dozen dredging vessels working the Mississippi this summer. Despite being fed by water flowing in from more than 40 percent of the United States, the river is feeling the ruinous drought affecting so much of the Midwest. Some stretches are nearing the record low-water levels experienced in 1988, when river traffic was suspended in several spots.

That is unlikely this year, because of careful engineering work to keep the largest inland marine system in the world passable. But tow operators are dealing with the shallower channel by hauling fewer barges, loading them lighter and running them more slowly, raising their costs. Since May, about 60 vessels have run aground in the lower Mississippi.